A Sail of Two Idiots

by Renee Petrillo

  Tracing these things was an exercise in frustration and led to the electrician later attaching the wrong wire to a wrong wire and burning out our remaining wind-generator circuit board. Sigh. Add it to the list!

  LESSON 51A: MAKE SURE ALL SYSTEMS ARE GO Before you leave home, have a marine electrician go with you through all your electrical systems. All of them. Know where all your wires go and label them. Check for shorts, upgrade wires where necessary (some of ours were too small to do what they were designed to do), and draw a diagram of what goes to what. Know where all the fuses are. Have spares of everything (that’s LESSON 16A but is worth repeating).

  LESSON 51B: DO THE SAME FOR YOUR ENGINE Have your engines (including the dinghy outboard) serviced, and have a mechanic walk you through where things are, tell you how and when to perform the required maintenance, and give you an idea of where problems are likely to occur down the line so you can prepare for them (at least by having spares or identifying the symptoms). Scribble notes in your manual, add labels, and/or draw diagrams.

  I See Another Pep Talk Coming

  Let’s see. We couldn’t figure out what was wrong with our engine, we blew another wind generator, we discovered a third leaky window on yet another rainy day, everything was moldy, and the expensive paint I had just used on the interior wasn’t holding up to all the cleaning and humidity. Both Michael and I were about at the end of our ropes. Where exactly was the fun part? As fast as things were being fixed, they were breaking again. Or new things were breaking. What a piece of …

  Boaters told us stories that made our problems look like peanuts, but that didn’t make us feel any better. All it did was make us realize all the things that could still go wrong. We had already blown through $30,000 of our limited sailing fund on boat stuff alone and hadn’t really gone anywhere after almost five months!

  Yep. We were in serious need of another pep talk. You probably are too (please put down that Prozac). Here’s what we eventually concluded. Although it was true that we put a lot of work into Jacumba, most people do this during a shakedown cruise. That’s what our trip until now really was. And all the money we’d spent, the bad weather, and our lack of experience/handiness simply made things more taxing. I hesitated putting all this in the book, lest you throw it in the fireplace and go buy a plane ticket instead. You didn’t, did you? You might want to wipe off those ash smudges and keep reading.

  The few sailors who had actually been south of the Bahamas told us that we should keep moving, that we hadn’t seen anything yet, and that the best was yet to come. Their advice? Get the heck out of where we were.

  Once again, we decided that we would not sink—I mean sell—the boat. We took deep breaths and knew that once we sailed somewhere warmer and sunnier, our outlook would improve. Sure we still had things to fix, but we’d be a lot less crabby if we weren’t also contending with never-ending weather systems. Okay then … time to start provisioning.

  LESSON 52: KEEP YOUR BALANCE It is exactly the balance of fixing things, sailing, exploring, and enjoying friends that is the boating life. We did not have this balance initially and, therefore, almost missed out on a fantastic adventure. Don’t let that happen to you.

  Final Days in the Abacos

  We decided to get the critical systems working and install the more minor stuff elsewhere. We now had a new/larger alternator, new three-pulley block for the mainsheet, new propeller, new larger chartplotter, new wind generator, new heavier anchor, new bigger wireless antenna (for Internet), and newly painted bottom. The final hold up was awaiting the arrival of a new circuit board for the newly fried wind generator.

  While we waited for that part, we traced the latest engine failure to a blown fuse. Why had it blown? Because of the larger alternator we had just installed. A new friend, Dave, on a nearby catamaran (who was waiting for a new $6,000 transmission: B.O.A.T.—Bring Out Another Thousand), helped us fix this problem and got the last of our electrical stuff working too. We also replaced the regulator on our propane tank when we were warned of a leak by the voice in our carbon monoxide detector.

  Before we knew it, the part for the wind generator was on board. OMG! This was it. We were finally going to head south. We were so ready. First we’d stage ourselves at Little Harbour, located farther south on the very long Great Abaco Island. Then we’d head out of the cut (our first since The Whale—Mommy!) to the central Exumas—still in the Bahamas but farther south. That meant warmth, right?

  On our way to Little Harbour, about 25 miles away, we giddily took a little detour to Hope Town, not only to break up the trip but to say good-bye to anyone we knew there. Not wanting to delay, we then excitedly headed for Little Harbour. Someplace new!

  Although we had fairly high winds, keeping us moving at around 8 knots with a beam reach (sailing perpendicular to the wind), we had our sails reefed (shortened) like good little sailors. What a great day! We got outside the harbor entrance to our destination, dropped our sails, and started motoring between the buoys toward the harbor. About halfway inside, a disembodied voice came forth from our VHF: “You … might … want … to … go … farther …” And then we hit a sandy patch right in the middle of the buoys. Hey! Who put that there? I’m guessing that the slow-talker had been warning us, but speak faster, man! We hadn’t hit it hard—only one hull was stuck—and the tide was coming in (hmmm, this felt familiar). The tide got us off in about 15 minutes, but not before our friends Estelle and Stephen on Siyaya, with sailing students on board no less, passed by and called us “blonkers.” No comment that they had done the same thing the week before. Once off the sand, we continued into the harbor and picked up a mooring, as required.

  This is where the plan got altered a bit. The winter cold fronts weren’t done with us yet, and yet another one was bearing down. By the end of the day, waves were so bad at the entrance/exit to the harbor that it became a game to watch boats trying to zip between them without getting doused, or grounded.

  While we waited for the storm to pass, we wandered around the island, met a new group of people, attended a potluck, and mentally prepared for what was to come. We took the weather delay to our trip south in stride and enjoyed ourselves.

  Four days later, we heard that sea conditions would remain terrible for another week. At $15 a night, we didn’t want to stay on the required mooring for that long, and didn’t want to sit there anyway, so we headed back the 20 miles northwest to Great Guana Cay to go to a Barefoot Man concert at Nippers instead. We were learning. When you’re given lemons …

  We knew we’d be in for a pretty windy trip, but we felt we could handle it. Once we got outside the protected harbor, though, we were surprised at how high the seas were. If that was inside the cut, we couldn’t imagine how the ocean looked outside. We debated going back in but realized that our discomfort was not coming from wave heights but sea direction. We wanted to practice in this, so we stuck with it. We eventually became invigorated instead of scared while sailing up to 13 knots as we surfed down waves with the winds pushing at an angle from behind (a broad reach). We had turned a corner on our comfort level and experience. We were saaa-iii-liing!

  Another way we knew we had turned a corner was finding a problem before it became major. On and off, black smoke was coming out of the exhaust pipe on one of the engines. We also noticed that the engine sounded a little … off. It turned out that the belts to the engine water pumps were cracked or cracking. Since those control the engine temperature, belts breaking would be bad. We fixed them (because we had spares—LESSON 16A—and because we smelled fish, LESSON 50).

  We arrived at Great Guana Cay in record time (about four hours to go 30 miles) and arrived to see a full anchorage. Wow! We’d never seen so many boats packed together like that, not even in Hope Town harbor. Luckily, with our shallower draft, we could go up to what became the “catamaran section,” where we settled in.

  The Barefoot Man was like a goofy Jimmy Buffet. The concert itself was a cross between Mardi Gras and spring bre
ak. Beads were being thrown, flabby women were gyrating on roofs, and an ancient woman showed us her ta tas (ew).

  Even more exciting was running into almost everyone we knew from Green Turtle, most of whom we hadn’t seen in months. It was great to touch base with them; in fact, we didn’t pay much attention to the concert. We even extended our reunion by having a sleepover on Jacumba. Hey, this boating thing was fun! (LESSON 31, Fun is important!)

  After such a good time with old friends, we were sad to leave, but we remembered what was to come. We were going to the Exumas! So we headed to Hope Town, Elbow Cay, for a final good-bye (again). By now we had done that route so many times that I didn’t even use the chartplotter. It was nice to know the sailing grounds so well.

  More reunions with friends. Another round of Bingo at Jack’s. The next morning we were in the midst of our final jaunt to Little Harbour when we once again passed Stephen and Estelle on Siyaya anchored off Elbow Cay’s Tahiti Beach, barbecuing and relaxing with a few other boaters. Well, that looked like fun, so we anchored there too. While there, we discovered that our genny needed a hem sewn. And then we discovered that the furler that allowed us to wrap the sail when we weren’t using it was stuck. Our experienced friends helped haul Michael up the 60-foot mast to get the furler released (and the sail repaired). There. What a fantastic, and much needed, week.

  Finally we sailed back toward Little Harbour. This time we didn’t moor inside the harbor but anchored near the cut instead. Why? Because we were leaving the next morning. We were finally going to leave the Abacos. There are those angels singing again.

  13

  Good-Bye, Abacos, Hello, Exumas (in the Central Bahamas)

  This was almost as exciting as leaving the States for the Bahamas all those years ago. Oh, had it been only about five months? At least this time we were leaving with some clue as to what we were doing and weren’t completely terrified. We were nervous, though, so we were pleased to see five other boats at the cut as well. At least we wouldn’t be alone.

  We were hoping that someone else had some experience going this way, so we dropped our dinghy from its davits into the sea and puttered up to everyone to get the scoop. Nope, no one had been this far south before. Drat! We ended up having a good conversation with Becky and Joe on Half Moon, a 40-foot monohull, and found ourselves becoming fast friends.

  The next morning we all lifted anchor and then acted busy, hoping that someone else would go through the cut first. There were reefs and rocks inside this cut, but at least we didn’t see any rabid whales. More importantly, the tide was on our side (LESSON 44, Go with the flow). Still, we didn’t want to be the first to go through. Half Moon finally made the break and off we went!

  The waves were 5 to 6 feet, the winds about 15 knots coming right across our beam. It couldn’t have been more perfect. We averaged between 8 and 9 knots and were way ahead of the pack. Michael and I felt a little sick initially but managed to keep our breakfast down.

  We enjoyed being alone, but it was nice knowing that people were behind us in case something happened. The 63-mile trip took about 7½ hours, most of it out of sight of land—a relief to me (no reefs to hit).

  Once we did see land, however, we had a decision to make. We were headed for one of our last waypoints to make the turn toward Royal Island when we saw a passage that seemed like a doable shortcut. We quickly consulted the guides and charts, decided we could go through it (they couldn’t all be wrong!), and turned in. It was a tight fit, with a reef on either side and at times eerily dark underneath us—very scary—but we trusted our charts and kept moving (slowly).

  Despite what the guides say, reading water is not a sure thing. I mean, the water was brown. Normally I wouldn’t go near that with a 10-foot pole (or a 37-foot boat). But then again, the water was so clear in the Bahamas that it looked shallow even when it wasn’t. We had to use all the tools at our disposal and trust ourselves (we were still working on that part).

  We did it! We’d had the perfect sail, and the shortcut shaved about 45 minutes off our trip. Time to drop the mainsail, drop anchor, and celebrate! I said, time to drop the mainsail. Nope. The sail wouldn’t lower. At all. The lines were twisted at the top of the mast and the sail was stuck. Sigh. We loosened the sheets so the sail couldn’t catch any wind and then headed into the anchorage to get into calmer surroundings (yes, another storm front was on its way).

  We anchored and stared at our offending sail. We were momentarily distracted by a manta ray skimming past, but we eventually broke out the bosun’s chair (a harness made just for this purpose) and hauled Michael up the mast to try to untwist the tangled lines at the top.

  Hurray for the electric anchor windlass. We could tie the spinnaker halyard (the one I used to haul Michael’s skinny butt up the mast) around the windlass. The windlass would give me a little power and leverage to allow me to pull him up.

  Michael couldn’t unwind or unhook anything due to the weight of the sail, so I let him back down so we could stare at it some more. Meanwhile, a nearby catamaran owner was watching us from his boat via binoculars. I was initially a bit put out by this nosy-body, but when he rowed over, yes rowed over, and offered to help, I realized he was simply trying to assess the problem from afar. He had all kinds of ideas, helped me haul Michael back up, and walked Michael through the process of breaking free the necessary parts.

  Tip: Buy walkie-talkie headsets. Your voice gets whisked away by the wind when you’re trying to yell at each other when one of you is aloft; they’re also useful for communicating between bow and cockpit when anchoring. A lot of boaters sneer at this contraption, but I’d prefer to talk normally rather than scream. We loved our headsets.

  I don’t know what we would have done without the other boater. When nothing was working, he’d keep coming up with another suggestion. We learned a lot during this process. After about two hours, the sail finally released. Again, we wished we could repay these people, but then we’d remember that this is a pay-it-forward community.

  While Michael had been up the mast working on the genny roller furler the previous day, our “helpers” unknowingly put the mainsail halyard block (a pulley) back on the mainsail half-cocked. We had unhooked that halyard from the head of the mainsail in order to use it to haul tools up to Michael while he was working on the furler, which attaches to the top of the mast. Most blocks spin 360 degrees, but ours didn’t and had a “right way” to attach it or it would jam. Jam it did. Michael didn’t notice this, and it caused the halyard to twist while he was hoisting the mainsail. Michael’s comment? “I wondered why that sail was so hard to get up.”

  LESSON 53: DON’T FORCE IT If an activity seems too difficult, you’re doing something wrong. Something has jammed, cracked, broken, come out of a cleat … Stop what you’re doing and see what has changed from the last time you did it. Men seem to have the toughest time with this lesson. Brains over muscle, please. This is a variation of LESSON 50 about smelly fish.

  LESSON 54: CHECK AND DOUBLE-CHECK Do not assume that others will put your boat back the way they found it. If someone has helped you with or done a repair, double-check that everything is put back and working properly.

  Royal Island

  Although (then) unpopulated and private, Royal Island is a pretty place to take refuge from what turned out to be quite a storm. We wouldn’t have wanted to be in the wrong place when that hit. We talked more with Joe and Becky on Half Moon; they had also been trying to break free from the northern islands since November. We had seen one another a few times wandering around Marsh Harbour but had never met. They were trying to get to the Dominican Republic before hurricane season, which would start in two months. We didn’t know what we would be doing that far in advance.

  We had hoped to check out Eleuthera Island (to the east) while we were in the vicinity but were worried about getting trapped by yet another weather system, so we decided to keep moving south.

  I had been dreading the next bit of sailing before we arrived at
Allen’s Cay in the central Exumas, 60 miles farther south. While I was plotting the route, our only option seemed to be going through a passage called Current Cut. That didn’t sound good. We knew there could be strong currents and tricky moves on the other side. I didn’t want to deal with it. After whining to Joe, I discovered that there had been another option I’d missed because it was in the crease of my chart. Yay, another way to go! I rerouted our trip (using my own new waypoints) to accommodate this much-welcome change through nice, wide Fleming Channel and was ready to go.

  We had a great sail. The waters, now 3,000 feet deep, were cobalt blue, with shallower patches spread throughout that made strange but beautiful circles of light blues and greens. Dolphins and the ever-present flying fish kept us company.

  Just before reaching Allen’s Cay, in an area known as Middle Ground, the chart showed a lot of x’s, which denoted scattered coral heads. They seemed obvious and far apart, so I hadn’t worried about them. Depths ranged from 7 to 20 feet, so deeper-keeled boats (such as Half Moon) had to watch their route.

  Suddenly we sailed into what was a minefield of rocks. Yes, they were obvious in the clear waters, but they were huge, scary, dark masses and they were everywhere. This would be interesting. We had wind (abeam) but would have to weave in and out, so we turned on our engines to keep us moving. If we lost speed, we’d lose steerage. Time for those headsets again. Michael was at the bow pointing this way and that while I tried to do what he was telling me and not hit the rocks we were passing. We were wondering if we had picked the wrong route, but we could see Half Moon about a half mile away weaving this way and that too. No greener grass over there.